In September 07, 2012, the developer rolled out a new version “Monster Geeks Plus”, allowing players to unlock more characters to progress faster than the free version.

Review:

Side-scrolling style, simple graphics, and bizarre characters. At first sight, Monster Geeks seems exactly a casual game where you might get bored only a few minutes after you pick it up. But the more you immerse yourself in it, the more you realize it is anything but.

It started casually though. Your hero, which appears to be a cartoony owl, jumps jubilantly from the left side of the screen towards right and comes across friends on the way to slay the red dragon. And imaginably, those friends would join you and play important roles in your coming battles.

Your companions are classified into Shaman, Tanker, Archer and Mage, each with its own distinctive skills and merits. Shaman produces MP so that your hero would be able to launch magical attacks; Tanker stands out with its good defense and the ability to cause great damage; Archer can cause damages on distant enemies while Mage could harm all the enemies in view.

Don’t worry if you lose any of your companions though – they would come back soon as long as you can endure all the enemy attacks before they are back. A battle ends when your hero dies or when time is up. It is your job to make full use of their abilities and ensure your team passes through each stage within the limited time and crushes all the monsters that stand in the way, which can be intensely difficult, even in easy mode. You don’t get to control your hero until you encounter enemies, when you can press the left or right button at the left bottom to speed your hero’s steps or just help it avoid enemy attacks.

Your hero can both use weapons like a spear (interestingly, it throws the spear towards a target instead of stabbing the target) and unleash magical skills including Heal, Blizzard, Earthquake and Meteor. The skill buttons listed at the bottom function exactly like the ones in many MMORPGs. If you don’t have enough MPs or if the skills are not ready after it was used just now, the buttons would be in grey colors. And to ensure you are allowed to use those attacks, however, you better keep your Shaman safe.

And the key to success is a clever use of the skills and a good knowledge of the cooldown time of skills. It is advisable not to apply all your attacking skills if there are still more enemies coming soon.

The idea of managing a whole team for battles is not new. We’ve been bestowed with such titles, among which some ones are quite successful, for example Monsterology. But few titles have fuse RPG elements, team battle, side-scrolling, and RTS all in one game and turn out to be as fabulous as Monster Geeks. Admittedly, the graphics are far from complicated and beautiful. Nonetheless, the simple but challenging gameplay keeps urging you to adopt a different strategy and make better decisions in battles and that promises fun and excitement all the way.